Young Trowbridge entrepreneur unveils brainwave in Dragons' Den

Teenager Jordan Daykin will appear in the BBC's Dragons’ Den series on Sunday to ask for investment

Young Trowbridge entrepreneur Jordan Daykin will appear in the BBC's Dragons’ Den series on Sunday to ask for investment in his third business before the age of 20.

The 19-year-old managing director of Grip It Fixings will pitch his latest enterprise to the five multi-millionaire Dragons in the hope of securing funding in order to help his business grow further.

Grip It Fixings, which is based in the Ashville Centre, Hampton Park West, Melk-sham, provides a new design of universal fixing for use with all types of plasterboard installation.

Mr Daykin left John of Gaunt School in Trowbridge at the age of 13, in favour of private tutoring, to follow his entrepreneurial dreams and came up with the idea for Grip It in 2008, while putting up curtain rails with his grandfather Stan.

Aided by his grandfather’s engineering background, it took the pair just a matter of days to come up with a prototype for the fixings and after months of testing they applied for a patent in 2009.

Mr Daykin said: “It will be a strange experience watching myself on TV. In the den you are just focused on trying to do your product the justice it deserves with your pitch.

“I was very nervous stepping in there as you build it up in your own head, but it was an amazing experience and I can’t wait to see Grip It Fixings on national TV in the hands of some of Britain’s best entrepreneurs.”

His first business was a website called RS2Services, inspired by his love of RuneScape, an online fantasy role-playing game. The site offered players the best RuneScape products at a cheaper price.

While struggling to find a tutor to help him with his academic work, Mr Daykin also founded nationwide tutoring agency Tutor Magnet, which currently has a database of over 400 tutors and generates a turnover of £2,000 a month.

Once the patent for Grip It was granted in November 2012, Mr Daykin sent out over 300 product leaflets to retailers across the country.

After initial interest from Screwfix, Plumbase and Buildbase, he met Wickes in September 2013, which is now an official distributor of Grip It products.

Making up the Grip It team with Mr Daykin are 11 of his friends, including his girlfriend Laura, who look after various areas of the business, from accounts and production to packing and distributing.

To see how he gets on in the Dragons' Den, tune in to BBC2 at 8pm on Sunday.